How Filing Verdict rates filing services

1. Total over three years (35%). Year one plus two renewals at each company's published service prices. The state's own fees are identical whoever files, so they are listed separately and not scored.
2. Paperwork the price handles (35%). How much of the recurring work sits inside one price: the registered agent, the annual or biennial report filed on your behalf, the EIN application, and use in other states.
3. Renewal behavior (10%). Whether the yearly price holds at renewal, and how easy the company makes it to renew or leave.
4. Match to the state (10%). How well the service suits that state's report schedule, late penalties, agent address rules and filing steps.
5. Up-front pricing (10%). Whether the amount due is shown before payment, with the state fee itemized at cost.

A gap of a few tenths is a near tie. The page then names the criterion that broke it and says what the lower pick does better.

Each verdict carries an editorial score out of 10. Filing Verdict assigns it from the criteria above; it is not a customer rating. Each score belongs to one state and one service, so the same company can score differently from page to page.

Company prices come from each company's own pricing and service pages, read when the site is built; every ranking page prints the date. Fees, forms, deadlines and agent rules come from official state schedules, forms and statutes, and each page lists them with the month they were last confirmed. Some checkouts add a card or processing charge to the state fee. We print the service fee and leave those totals out.

A state list holds Mainstay Filing, which works in all fifty states, and the registered agent services built around that state. A company is ranked for a service only if its own pages sell that service at a published price.

There are no customer ratings or customer quotes here, and nothing on the site is legal or tax advice. The order is our editorial judgment from the criteria above.